The original tune of Namewee‘s latest music video (July?) is about 綠島 (Pinyin: Lǜ Dǎo) or Green Island, a place to exile political prisoners during martial law in Taiwan at the time of Kuomintang’s ‘White Terror’. It was recorded before the Cabinet rejected Namewee’s apology.

The political prisoners, once freed, went on to form the Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan. One of the more famous political prisoners, Shih Ming-teh, recently came to Malaysia and paid a visit to Dr. Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.

Cabinet rejects apology from rapper

(Malaysiakini, 16 Aug) The cabinet has not accepted 24-year-old Wee Men Chee’s apology over his Negarakuku rap song, which was described as an insult to the nation.

In announcing this, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nazri Aziz said the cabinet was in no “position to forgive him” and that the Attorney-General’s Chambers will decide whether to prosecute Wee.

“To not prosecute him is not ‘on’ at all because he has committed an offence against the nation and no one, not the cabinet or political parties, are in the position to forgive him,” he was quoted by the Star today.

“If he had committed an offence, which I think was an offence, then we must allow the attorney-general to investigate and decide whether to take him to court,” he added.

Nearly half a million people have viewed a six-minute rap music video by Wee, a 24-year-old Malaysian student at Taiwan’s Ming Chuan University.

Wee, who also goes by Namewee, posted a music video where he raps on national issues. The rap was done in Mandarin and Hokkien

The video post, on Youtube.com, received thousands of comments, many of which described Wee’s video as insulting Islam or inciting racial hatred.

On whether Wee would be called home to answer charges against him, Nazri said the AG would have to investigate and if he comes to the decision to prosecute him, then when Wee returns, he would have to face the charges.

Cannot create precedent

Wee could be charged under the Sedition Act because he had insulted the symbol of the nation, he said.

“We cannot be like the West where you can have the underwear with the design of the Union Jack. In Britain, you can insult the Queen or the flag, I don’t care, but in this country we have laws and we cannot create a precedent where you commit an offence, apologise and get away with it,” Nazri was quoted as saying by the Star.

He added that Wee was not a boy but a 24-year-old man and he should be held responsible for the act.

“It is not an issue of ethnicity or being racial but against national interest,” he said.

“Malaysia Negaraku ku. ‘Ku ku’ can also mean ‘cuckoo’ so it was insulting. I don’t think this was done out of ignorance. He was a university student and he meant to insult the national song,” he added.

In the Hokkien dialect, ‘ku ku’ could also translate to penis, longevity or cheap.

Meanwhile, Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage Dr Rais Yatim agreed that Wee’s case should be handed to the AG’s office to determine if the song was seditious.

“As an ordinary person, if even as a cabinet member, we cannot decide whether the matter was wrong under the law. We have the public prosecutors to decide whether legal action would be taken based on their investigations,” Rais was quoted as saying by Bernama today.

I’m kind of fed up with this whole fiasco already. This is being prolonged for purely political reasons. If the government thinks that he did something wrong, they should just charge him and have it done with.

-an illegal action inciting resistance to lawful authority and tending to cause the disruption or overthrow of the government

-Sedition is a deprecated term of law to refer to non-overt conduct such as speech and organization that is deemed by the legal authority as tending toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often included subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws.

-An offence against the crown and government. It was punishable by a term in prison, so sedition was not considered to be as serious as treason, which was punishable by death.

-Incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.

-The inciting of hostility against the government.

Me engrish bad, but the anthem and the flag belong to the gomen meh? Or is it hoh, the gomen ppl adopt “sedition” to mean a whole wide range of things?

What is so insulting? Do you people remember long time ago, the movie “There’s something about Mary”. It received a U rating for Umum. That movies are full of adult jokes. How can you give a U rating apart from the fact that the censor board don’t know English very well to understand the jokes.

Like I said…..ministers have NOTHING to do …never go visit spot checks…never really read what were proposed to follow up….but faithfully take all the time needed to pray during office hours and then off to the golf course.
They are only interested to talk about their race …country and protect their votes..as they read and see them.
This case it to waste time. Have we not seen it over and over again for 50 years?

It’s strange how rabidly energetic Nazri the Nazi is over a frustrated young man’s civil protest, when we haven’t heard half a peep from him on the Gerak corruption report; the ACA and AG couldn’t scrape together enough integrity/braincells/energy/balls to investigate the allegations of corruption against the IGP and Dep. Internal Security Minister; the Port Klang debacle is wilfully ignored; UMNO Youth waves pointy little things in the air and shouts racist threats…

Prosecute and intimidate, the BN government is getting especially good at this.
Focus on the small issues and let larger issues be buried under the carpet.
The crap that is being spewed out by Nazri is getting intolerable.
Why no charges for Keris, Nazri?
This is the sorry mentality of our BN government, and if we allow this to go on, we only have ourselves to blame.

Protect the country from rappers.Protect the religion from dress code. Protect the religion from one wanting to change her national PROTECTED religion to another..CANNOT DO THAT.
Protect insults made to UMNO members.
Guided democracy does not give you license to belittle the nation…but join UMNO and you maybe free to go out from jail every night..with both eyes close…you can rape…rob and con …and talk too much…you can join Tun Salleh Abbas….be shamed and damned unlawfully.
What a great party to be a member.

gajah di depan mata tak nampak, kutu di seberang sungai tu boleh diperhatikan…crime and dire state of corruption is not being paid similar attention as this boy’s rap song which other than the religion part is actually quite true in reflecting the real situation in malaysia…50 years old already, but many politicians so shock sendiri with all funny titles, and political rhetorics with no true spirit of patrioism or true sense of wanting to make Malaysia better for all Malaysians…racial politics still predominatewhich can be degressing..but we are so full of ourselves, and statistically we look so good in everything…from economy, to freedom of speech..but what is the truth?? many news were covered up, many events not published in the local media…what is freedom of press here.?mugabe was here, why there isn’t a word of it in local media whereas the whole world knew he was here. protests in KLCC was a total blackout..and that zakaria from klang also got scot free after such a huge media blow up of his bungalow…wel,malaysians forget easily isn’t it?sigh,,,i love my country…politicians, please live up to your expectation….i donwant to see my country become something like indonesia. bloggers, blog on, keep us updated on all things not published local media. bravo!

just as the cabinet cannot forgive Namewee, I also cannot forgive them for condoning the sodomisation of the country’s money via PKA and the ECM Libra-Avenue Assets merger.
abettment to sodomisation is as guilty as sodomisation,. heard that you Nazri and the goons?

The Nazi Cabinet has long taken for granted that some ppl must accept poorly disguised malice and menace and mustn’t squeak even about them. The BN components (aka running dogs) helped promote this infernal dhimmitude ideology and are definitely no less to blame for this sordid state of affair all along.

The negarakuku saga has been blown out of proportion. It has got nothing to do with patriotism but an attempt by some quarters to distract from the more important issues like corruption , abuse of power and mind boogling INCOMPETENCE . Just last week the tragic bus accident which claimed 22 lives . I don’t see ministers coming out and threatening those responsible with threats like traitor or treason yet these people took the lives of innocent malaysians with their greed .
How about the mind boogling INCOMPETENCE of the PDRM . Their third rate shoddy police work has resulted in murderers walking free . I only see the LICE in PO-LICE.
Howabout the innocent baby girl who had to have her arm amputated because of the criminally negligent doctors . I don’t see any ministers coming out to show their outrage .
The way to win the heart of the rakyat is to get rid of these corrupt and incompetent officials . Only then will we proudly fly the Jalur Gemilang.

We Malaysians are getting ready to celebrate our 50th Merdeka Celebrations.Let’s focus and reflex on the struggle and sacrifices of our nation’s founding fathers to achive Independence for this bountiful and beautiful country. Let us not forget to glorify the sprit and vision of our great leaders,YTM Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Tan Cheng Lock and Tun V.T.Sambanthan, for this country.Without the cooperation,understanding and farsightedness among those leaders, we would not have freed ourselves from the colonial regime. Let us live together happily forever as our forefathers did to give birth to this nation of pluralism. Having said this, lets forgive and forget the Weng Meng Chee episode.Let the AG chamber exercise their wisdom to handle this matter wisely. Long live Malaysia.

in my opinion, the man did something with good intention but in other peoples’ point of view, maybe they think that he meant something else..confronting is good to solve the problem,discussing as well!

Who in the world will take a rapper “monkey rap” seriously? No reasonable Malaysian will really believe that this “rap” will incite racial riot and disturb our harmony, except for those Umno-putra and honorable minister who practically have nothing much to do with their high office, come out with some sorts of trump up charges like sedition, blasphemy or other draconian law in order to please those religious extremists n racist politicians for political purposes.